Tacitus and "the most dangerous book ever written"

[caesar novus]

That quote in my title comes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germania_(book)#Reception , and most of the text is in http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/tacitus1.html .

Idea came from sort of a junky but fascinating documentary on discovery military channel (Myth Hunters). Some Italian count was amazingly successful in keeping "Germania" by Tacitus out of the hands of persistant Nazi intruders, only to have it almost ruined in the flood of Florence.

The manuscript was used in medieval times to try to rally Germans to defend against Turks, and again used as a (false) foundation myth in the 1930/40s. Apparently Tacitus was referring to a warlike tribe not actually dna related to  modern Germans, and mostly made it up anyway?

[Onasander]

It definitely existed before the 15th century, besides the many quotes it has in other works, the text that Ive been working on quotes it too..... and it has never been translated into a modern language.... seems rather absurd lengths to take to falsify a text.

 

Um..... yeah, Nazis then and now are a severe pain in the butt, I have had my hands full with two of them on online philosophy forums for the last 5 years. The American Nazis Party did a sneaky 180 and went underground as a spiritualist movement, its damn near impossible to detect them from your average Nietzschean Enthusiast. They go out of their way to disavow stormfront and other obnoxious symbolism. I dont like it, think the movie Inglorious Bastards got the way to treat a Nazis right.

 

KKK is now trying to relabel itself as a institution like the ACLU.

 

Whatever.

 

I destroyed all the copies of Nizam al Mulk in San Francisco I came across..... its about thr most racist text Ive ever came across..... a work of statecraft at that.

 

These things..... I like history, like to preserve it, but certain texts I just dont like certain unbalanced groups reading. I dont know what that makes me. A hipocrit against my own idesls at times.

 

I just really hate Nazis. It bothers me how National Socialism succeeded today in so many parts of the world, and Europe. What was the point of WW2? What, the EU dominated by Germany leads it instead of a dictator of a Reich? Same thing in the end.

 

Hiding a manuscript readily available in print to screw over hitler is a very minor victory.... if even that. Would of been but a token representing a ideal the germans were trumpeting with or without the original manuscript. I doubt this manuscript could of reversed to poor archaeological findings of the Nazi expedition. They pretty much killed off Hitlers historic master race theory on their own without outside help.

 

So..... manuscript stayed out of hitlers hands, but national socialism is the economic theory of Europe, in its post WW2 pacifist form, the Nazis theology taught by Heiddegar reigns supreme there... why should I care?

[Maladict]

It definitely existed before the 15th century, besides the many quotes it has in other works, the text that Ive been working on quotes it too..... and it has never been translated into a modern language.... seems rather absurd lengths to take to falsify a text.

 

 

 

I don't think anyone is claiming it didn't exist before the 15th century.

Just out of curiosity, what work are you translating?

[caesar novus]

The Italian count, under pressure from Mussolini, did allow the Germans to photocopy it (itself an ancient copy, Tacitus original being lost). Then the issue becomes will it be brought to Germany as an icon, then destroyed or looted. Oh I suppose the same could have happened if the "liberation" of Italy was even more violent... witness the loss of Roman Imperial barges that Mussolini had excavated.

 

Anyway, the story told by the son of the count almost defies belief. The manuscript stayed in the villa and the count's family stayed in another villa that was known and repeatedly ransacked by specially-sent German contingents. They all stayed safely hidden in place, until the Italian gov't required the manuscript to be presented in Florence on the day of the mega flood (1966?).

 

So the narrative was interesting, but how over the top was the "dangerous" quote from Wiki? I suppose Germania's prominence wasn't a so much a cause of ultra-nationalism as an effect. But let's not underestimate it as a reinforcement block or warning sign.

 

I'm reading the free kindle version of 1936 Fodor European guidebook where Brits are reassured how safe it is to go to the olympics in Germany for instance. They say the extreme prevalence of uniforms by men, women, and children is not a sign of old style militarism, but their reveling in military wear is equally matched by their love of peace. Then I switch to accounts 6 years later of British merchantmen and sailors on suicide missions to supply Malta, for instance by a sailor who lost his parents to German bombs and was himself sunk, only to be rescued and sunk again days later. Foreigners were especially welcomed at 1936 olympics not only for propaganda, but for foreign exchange which was desperately needed in order to stockpile modern war supplies.

 

To be fair, although naziism became popular I don't think that implied widespread support of foreign invasions or violent racism. Maybe Germans envisioned at most an economic union with Belorussia, Ukraine, and deporting recent jewish economic immigrants. Hitler's invasions were often met internally with dread until victory reports came back. Public violence against jews were surprisingly controversial even at the leadership level, with Goering and even Himmler livid at the way Goebbels put the SA on a rampage for crystal night.  Himmler had ordered a more humane "appearing" event and had demanded his orders be repeated back to him from all locations.

 

I wonder if Germania text had any influence on the composer R. Wagner in the 1800's. Just when I thought nazism could be explained as dysfunctional reactions to marxist revolutions of 1917 in Russia and 1918/9 in Bavaria and economic collapse, I hear some snippets of Wagner's essays in a music lecture series that sound as rabid as Goebbels.

 

On the other hand I am reading a Japanese sub (I-boat) commander that surely read no Tacitus yet stayed unrepentantly fascist postwar. Says they had a right to overlord millions of mainland asia, just as the US occupied spanish Texas-to-California. Sorry, but those spanish territories were nearly abandoned at the time, and the sparse population needed basics of law, order, and defense  from somebody. The sub commander says their massive slaughter of Chinese civilians were no worse than that of American Indians, but the latter was not a systematic killing of dense populations but rather a chaotic or mismanaged arrangement of inevitable jump to the much higher carrying capacity of that land.

Edited January 5, 2014 by caesar novus